Well Leslie, you are certainly in a panic about the card.
Without really knowing I'll bet there will be catagories for protection purposes,
for judges, police, etc etc.
It would not be unreasonable for some people to be able to apply for that catagory.

I have another worry for you. With oil depletion, petrol rationing will
probably become necessary. There is a suggestion that the card be used
to allocate a yearly supply of petrol. Then under the Transition Protocol
each time you buy petrol the amount is deducted. Each year the depletion
percentage would reduce your allocation. You could buy or sell unused
allocation from other card holders.
Just anyone having a card reader would not give access to all the data
if it was encrypted.
Encryption can be that tight that you will be an old lady in a nursing
home before it got unpacked.

this govt does not need cards to invade privacy, as they do it already in sublte ways, and most recent was the Senate enquiry [whitewash] into Child Support Agency getting new "Jackboots at Dawn" powers

I thought my submission was KISS and to the point but another trumped mine with a simple truth that the REASON it is so easy for the govt to INVADE privacy is that Howard follows a former great leader

"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think"
Adolf Hitler

it's no more complex than that

Yah, vy not a zimple number on the wrist mit metallic ink?

I'm opposed to a national identity card as well. Total invasion of privacy.

To understand Privacy abuse you need to get up earlier than Howard [who is up at sparrow's] because he has simply reversed the Privacy Act in the media and in his agencies

It has nothing to do with encryption but about when can the govt get, store, refer to your information AT ALL. It is all stated in the Privacy Act in simple terms, essentially that unless info is required by an Act of Parliament, then it MUST remain private [unless you are stupid enough to GIVE it to some govt department]

Moreover the "sister Act" to the Constitution is Acts Interpretation Act [1901] and it says even Howard can't just amend the Privacy Act for no good reason. So Howard is doing what he has done from day 1 and has erected "firewalls" [eg the Privacy Commissioner] in all departments and of course in the courts to stop people exercise rights, eg in 7 years only 1 Privacy case [Palmer vs CSA] at Fed Magistrate Court, and even it is a Barry Crocker

So as Kirby J said in Harrington, "depart from those pre-conditions and what is done can not stand AS IT IS FORBIDDEN BY THE CONSTITUTION"

But bottom line [as per orig post] is biggest help to Howard is simply as Hitler said: "it is most fortunate for governments that the people do not think"

I like the idea that key medical information is encrypted on the card so that your life could be saved in an emergency, however the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages.

In Michael Chrichton's book NEXT, genetic information is sent to an insurance company that notes the holder of this gene has a genetic predisposition to heart attack, oops! this increases our health insurance risk, deny the person health insurance, thus person loses job. Far fetched, no. The author has an appendix [to a novel!] where he spells out the lack of laws protecting genetic material, privacy of medical records.

We don't have effective privacy laws in place in Australia and when you read Jocelynne Scutt's piece about the outsourcing of welfare functions to the churches you see that there is even less control over the data. The "employment industry" hires a casualised workforce who are only marginally more secure than the people on welfare and they will be very corruptible. The "employment industry" workers are often untrained and ignorant of the functions they are to provide and the legislative framework within which they operate.

Then of course our elected masters are hell bent on offshoring our databases to third world countries where workers earn annual wages of $5000. Very cheap to tap into all that information.

Contrast that to the current controls over Medicare data, where the data can only be viewed by Medicare, and maybe doctors and hospitals.

If you work from the premise that if "they" want to find out something about you then they will.
If however you are one of the 20 million then you will never be noticed.
It would be simple to encrypt the data separately for each function.
ie medical people would have the key for the medical segment.
Centrelink would have the key for employment or pension matters.
The resources Dept wouold have the key for your petrol usage. eh eh !
The tax Dept would have the key for your income data.
ands so on and on. It is so obvious that I cannot imagine that that is not what they will do.

A writer in Melbourne’s Herald Sun warned last October 22 that Australia stood “at the cusp of a dire new phase in its history” and called on people to “resist a new regime of tyranny”.

“I do not want to live in a police state and that is exactly what we will become if police are able to jail, tag with electronic bracelets and restrict the activities of people all without laying a single charge.”
Labor and Liberal are following Bush and politically are not that much different. Many of the draconian laws passed behind the backs of people in the last few years revolve around people being arrested without charge. In this devious way you cannot defend yourself if you do not know what you are being charged with.
Due to the high levels of wage and social innequality this creates tensions whereby democracy cannot be maintained. Moreover Howard and Rudd are terrified of workers finding out the hidden agenda of exploitation contained in the Workplace Relations Laws which is not immediately apparent. What must be taken into consideration too is that we pay for the hospitals, Medicare and schools etc., two to three times over. Whilst the governments carries out a wrecking operation against them sometimes giving them to their cronies. Howard or Rudd seek to suppress all opposition. What is their history but workers have no rights and the employers all rights.

Nothing to hide? So no need to look. Problem solved.

Another solution in search of a question.

Alleged concerns, like address confidentiality, l dont buy. Motivated persons (like scarey murderers) wont rely on the public record to find out where you live, there are age old ways to do that. $500 to a private investigator will flush out almost anyones's whereabouts. Those sort of people dont really buy the 'lm a potential victim of violence, sniff, sniff' routines. Leslie, l've seen you run that act and you dont do it very well, its a bit easy to see past.

Seems easy enuff to avoid the implications of this card, initially at least, eventually all exceptions will be closed and all will get marked, no doubt shortly after birth. Linking to govt handouts is a front, easy to get over the line. The thing will eventually be used in myriad ways. All to assert control.

Privacy is already DEAD. Killed by convenience and complacency long ago.

The claim to privacy is a very thin one, quite illusory. Look no further than the playbook attempts to use the children, oh the children, to justify the authors contention. Predictable and pretty lame. Clearly, anyone truely concerned for the safety of their children would never expose them to potential harm thru one's actions in the first place, then again, thats what justification is for.

Author can see where this is going ('fingerprinted' at birth) and it could throw the area of her activism into chaos. Maybe thats why she's also advocating (not in this article, but elsewhere) for the notion of social fathe..., l mean parents.

l was very concerned about systemic bludgeoning of privacy a couple of decades ago. Realised two things... vast majority dont care (certain death) and there are ways around the beast.

That article was a pretty good eulogy to the long since dead notion of public privacy by default.

Now, Les, c'mon tell us whats really going on.

oh, yeah, and some web site will have encryption key cracks too.

trade 215; I think you are living a conspirosy theory life.
Probably been "cracking" too many computer games.

I am not talking about that sort of encryption.
Any encryption can be cracked, given enough time with a brute force
solution, but you will probably be dead by the time "they" crack it.
What you are worrying about is that "they" will put in a profile and
it will pop out you. Gord, how paranoid can you get ?
Why would they want to pop you out of the database ?
Any parameters they put into a database that size will produce hundreds of hits.
If they already know about you they will know the brand of toothpaste
you use. If they don't know about you, what the hell ?

Some people no longer see reds under the bed, they see ASIO hand in
hand with the CIA. I would worry more about identity theft.
Do you properly destroy your personal paperwork, or do you just dump
into the bin the night before the garbos come ?

this sounds like just one more way of allowing hackers access to our private info.
every day we use our market cards to get sale prices on a can of tuna, we go and take money from bank machines with our atm cards, we pay tolls with electronic devices attached to our cars, our cell phones can tell within 20' where we are at any given time. We can buy a Cooper Mini that has a fancy key fob that makes electronic street signs say hello to us by name. All new passports have the same chip embedded with all of our info. Go to the Apple store to buy a computer, and you do not even need to go to the cash register to pay, it is all done via wireless. and if your computer is acting up...well you get on line and an unseen person in another country will jump right onto your computer and fix it for you. We have become lax with our most personal details. Our egos have played into this hodge podge of information sharing as well, just this year police have made over 200 arrests from "MYSPACE", and not just your garden varity pedophiles, but theives showing off their take, "YOUTUBE", "MYSTUFF" all a hit. got a website??
We don't even need private eyes any more, we spend so much time telling the world of our exploits and sharing photos of our kids on line, we forget that little brother can be watching us as well. Have you ever been in an elevator in a hospital an overheard something said about "the cancer patient in 311" or passed by a desk at the bank to see someones account information sitting there? How about your alum card or old student ID? where has that been, has it been in a Coke machine on campus? have you paid for lunch used it in a copy machine? now that students can have a declining balance attached to the ID non university venders have all you info as well. Think about where you have been this week....

The article title itself contains the word you are all missing "your choice", and concludes as:

The question isn’t whether citizens have something to hide. The question is whether the government is *entitled* to demand, record, sift, sort, match and share our private information and biometric identifiers without making a solid case

Here is Principle 1 of Privacy Act [and its not in Swahili so even a mushroom can understand]

Principle 1
Manner and purpose of collection of personal information
1. Personal information shall *not* be collected by a collector for
inclusion in a *record* or in a generally available publication unless:
(a) the information is collected for a purpose that is a *lawful*
purpose *directly* related to a function or activity of the
collector; and

So you can go to a judge and say I want an injunction to stop The Rodent [or anyone, eg CSA] from doing anything at all in the 11 priv priciples - simple. So as I said, Rodent has stopped all that by his firewall the Priv Commissioner who makes an excuse for the accused and then tells the porky that once she has said no there is no path to court

and it worked, and no other mushroom has ever challenged Palmer case, so yes as in all his exploits, IR law, fam law, CSA of last year, every bit offends Constitution BUT someone has to make a case and not even uni students complain anymore as Howard has them all counting their Telstra shares. So we will GET the card and it WILL be illegal but who cares? - well nobody, and I read the article as simply lamenting that apathy that has consumed Oz

bazz,

nice try mate.

bzzz... wrong answer.

cheerz.

If the proposed system can guarantee that no other man’s child will appear on my card without my permission, I’d vote for it in a flash. Just on that.

yes you are talking other side of coin now, DNA proof is something the govt does not WANT you to know, for starters because it would decimate the Child Support Agency as you hint. So with the pesent Liam MaGill circus the govt is using it to INDUCE blokes to think along those lines ie DNA at birth and CSAAct based on DNA and not the 3 assumptions of parentage at present [eg you were married etc]

But as soon as you vote for card there will be "ethical/PRIVACY matters" to rule out DNA, well unless you are Tony "DNA" Abbott

"thanks for having me dad" - pity he wasn't dad, but it got the DNA Kid some votes, without even needing to throw one kid overboard

DNA fingerprinting... at birth.

BINGO.

And its implications for parenting and who pays. As usual with this stuff... FOLLOW the MONEY TRAIL. That yields the answer.

That is the thinly veiled agenda of the author's piece.

Its very insidious too, because the govt will prolly be able to get men, who would ordinarily be highly aversive to DNA fingerprinting (on privacy grounds), to support it (on both pragmatic and deeply emotional grounds, namely paternity).

Typical, govt back door strategy. Quite brilliant really.

Once they get our support, the thing will quickly spread and has the potential to touch peoples lives in many ways, both good and bad, not initially considered.

Then there is a good chance that the reason we supported it will become redundant if the govt and courts REDIFINE paternity by introducing the concept of SOCIAL PARENTS, an viola, back to square one on that front, whilst getting what they want (DNA fingerprinting).

So, those that want DNA fingerprinting will be happy. Those that want the child support dollars to keep flowing will be happy. The articles author will be happy. She has been championing the idea of SOCIAL FATHERS for a while now.

The courts have already telegraphed their intentions to go down this path by making duped dads continue to pay for someone else's progeny, refusing refunds or damages on the basis of paternity fraud... all, of course, in the BEST INTERESTS of the CHILD. Funny that, children grow up to become adults and are then ultimately exposed to the inherent injustice. The whole thing becomes a red herring, as l (an adult) am also my parents' child.

These folks are very cunning, very clever, very slyyyyyyyyyyyy foxes indead.

yes trade I could not have said that better my goodself [maybe with a few sics between friends]

Hey I already DID say it above

but nice to have a mushroom come INTO the light and proclaim "I had a dream" and all that stuff

but always remember:

" We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig, cow after
cow, village after village, army after army. And they call me an
assasin. What do you call it when the assasins accuse
the assasin ? They lie.. they lie and we have to be merciful
for those who lie. Those nabobs. I hate them. How I hate them..."

Who gives a damn about privacy? When my privacy is invaded by having to pay too much tax to support the bludgers and illegal immigrants and the like I have the right to object to these people, and their 'do-gooder privacy' supporters.

What are you afraid of? Being found out for what you and the people who can do no wrong (as if) really are?It is simple: if you don't want to have your privacy invaded don't suck at the taxpayer tit. Pay your own health costs and don't expect the taxpayer to pay for your lifestyle.

Simple.

If you need the support of the taxpayers of this country, then accept that those taxpayers have the right to hold you accountable.

Who gives a damn about privacy? When my privacy is invaded by having to pay too much tax to support the bludgers and illegal immigrants and the like I have the right to object to these people, and their 'do-gooder privacy' supporters.

Dont follow you there

The Priv Act [PAct] was made in 1988. Howard rules by Big Brother so wishes PAct was never made, but he can't just repeal it. Instead he has been cunning and appointed firewalls [eg Fed Mag Ct and Priv Commissioner] to prevent mushrooms using the PAct when Big Bro peeks in the window

But Howard wants more - he wants ALL your info but PAct clearly prevents govt COLLECTING and STORING info unless specifically required by another Act, so enter the Oz Card marketing plan where the STORING is done by the mushroom himself [and a bit of semantics might say the mushroom actually COLLECTED it too]. So you say well I will keep the card in my pocket so Rodents can't nibble at it

So the final clever part of plan is eg a bloke like me who paid 40 years of tax and saved your arses by fighting the Yellow Peril in Nam finally lines up for just a few bob in my old age but I must take card OUT of pocket and when I do anything else can be sucked off it

And forget encryption etc - we are dealing with I.T. Professionals - nerds so stupid/devious [tick the box] they fleeced us of 100 billion 7 years ago claiming they couldn't count to 2,000, and not one mushroom or lawyer ever cried foul/fowel [or even cried rodent]

Just because they are IT professionals doesn't mean a thing when it
comes to real encryption. What I am talking about is not the so called
encryption used around most PC application.

You don't really think the spooks use that sort of encryption do you ?

The encryption arguement is a red herring anyway.

For the most part it'll prolly be VERY good.

But there's always a way to get the key, there's no need to pick the lock. Very impratical and irrelevant for most of us, but it will slip out. Nothing is infallible.

Man builds better mouse traps, nature produces better mice. Its the legacy of the human race.

Take for example ATO TFN algorithm. Insiders leaked that one ages ago. Its a stretch to think same wont be done with whatever bit encryption algorithm goes into designing the card. And credit card number generators are all over the net. Govt rarely does things better than the private sector.

Personally, l dont think the card can be stopped and lm not about to put any energy into stopping it. What for. There WILL be plenty of work arounds for those inclined. Always are. Simplest one is to stay off the govt nipple. Of course thats not for everyone.

It always makes me larf that people think that criminals will be stopped by laws or burglars stopped by locked doors.

Look at the introduction of GST. The pollies touted it as a way to stop tax evasion. LOL and bwahahaha. Laws dont stop tax evasion... they cause tax evasion. In fact GST and ABN merely introduced another layer of beauracracy that MOTIVATES evasion and gives people an opportunity to enhance the value of 'cash' transactions by knocked 10% off, straight away. You talked to any construction tradesman lately? Anytime l ask 'can you do better' they take 10% of STRAIGHT AWAY, for cash, many will even say its the GST.

If anyone is concerned about the information being linked in the future, just be careful how ya use it. Think about it. Use some other form of ID. If it doesnt bother you, fine whip it left and right. Whatever.

Its coming, no doubt about it. Maybe not this time around but eventually.

I have been the victim of four confirmed privacy breaches in as many years. In each instance my home address and/or phone number was given to a woman has been harassing me and who was on probation for trying to strangle someone when she started hassling me.

Two of those breaches involved federal government agencies. She used to work for Centrelink. I can't tell for sure from the subpoena'ed material but it looks like she started working for them with a criminal record up her sleeve.

When I approached Centrelink it was with a concern that she would access my record and find out where I lived, so I wanted a block on it. They refused. I explained the background. I offered them appropriate legal documentation, including a copy of her subpoena'ed psychiatrist's notes. Their view, however, is that they will only place a block on a file after a breach has occurred, even when one of their employees is a violent criminal with a disturbing psychiatric history.

Because, they said, our employees know not to do this - it just doesn't happen. And when it does, criminal charges are pressed.

So they commenced an investigation, slowly. What they did was conduct the investigation so slowly that she was gone by the time they finished, at which point they said - well we can't do anything about people who don't work for us any more. They did nothing about it. And if you read Centrelink's annual privacy reports you'll see that's their usual approach.

She now works for another government department.

And it happened again only recently - only this time she didn't have to peek, they just gave it to her instead.

I've moved several times and have taken every precaution to prevent her from being able to find me but the government just has no respect for privacy. The advice I received from a lawyer was to stop telling the government where I live.

And that's exactly what I intend to do. Australia Card? I don't care what law they make I won't be getting one.

RE the encryption;
The point I was making is that there is no key, at least in the way you mean.
Each department would have a different key for you and you have a different key for every department.
The key the dept has is meaningless and has no use except when you
present your card.
The newer systems are bit like the old PGP if you remember it.
PGP was broken but it required two years with 50 PCs working on it all night every night.
The point I was making is even if an employee could get your key
there is absolutely nothing they could do with it.

The databases of each dept need not be linked but of course someone who claims a pension
should be checked to see if they have a taxable income.
So as now the Tax office and the Centrelink need to be able to check.
Anyway are we not getting a bit paranoid about this ?